Matthew 15:10-11… After Jesus called the crowd to Him, He said to them, “Hear and understand. 11 It is not what enters into the mouth that defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.”

After scolding the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees for their
traditions that had taken priority over the Scriptures, Jesus “called the
crowd to Him” in order to correct their thinking, for they had been
misled by their teachers. Calling them to both “hear” and “understand,”
Jesus was about to make a solemn point that all Jews needed to know. What Jesus was about to tell them would rock the very foundation of their entire belief system about food and cleanness.

The Jews were given many dietary restrictions by God upon their release
from Egypt under Moses (cf. Lev. 11). God gave these restrictions to
Israel not only to keep His people healthy (for many of the animals He
restricted them from eating were, unbeknownst to them, disease carrying animals) but also to separate His people from the rest of the world. Though the Jews did not understand bacteria and its harmful effects in those days, God did. The world was thus to look upon His people as God-fearing, healthy people who displayed the glories of God in their daily life and health. Yet abstaining from those foods did not make them holy. They remained sinners in need of God’s grace in spite of their diet. Obedience to these restrictions was indeed intended by God to point to something much greater, namely a fulfillment in their Messiah, Jesus.

Jesus came into the world, not to abolish the law but to fulfill it
(Matt. 5:17). Therefore, when He told the Jews in v. 11 that what enters
a person’s mouth is not what defiles that person but what “proceeds out
of the mouth, this defiles the man,” He was fulfilling the dietary laws
spelled out by Moses in sections of the Torah like Leviticus 11.
Essentially, Jesus told the Jews that a person can indeed eat with
unwashed hands, eat port, etc. and not be ceremonially unclean. This in
no way abolished the law; rather, Jesus was fulfilling the law. After
all, one is not made morally clean by washing their hands but by placing
their faith in their Messiah, namely Jesus. Uncleanness is of the heart,
and it can be made clean only by trusting in Christ.

Christians today can look to the dietary laws given to the Jews and actually share the gospel by preaching them. After all, they point to Christ! He makes the unclean clean. The moral repugnancy of man is not reflected in his diet; rather, it is observed through his mouth. Man uses his mouth to vilify other races of people, to curse, to malign, etc. This is the moral uncleanness of man, reflecting his depraved, defiled spirit (cf. 12:34). Moral purity, however, is reflected in how one behaves. For instance, one can honor his parents through physical and financial aid, not only because he loves them, but because he knows it ultimately honors God. Yet those who honor their parents in order to inherit their wealth or simply because they want the accolades their parents might give them do not honor God but honor themselves. One might say that even though folks like this act morally, they remain in a state of uncleanness since they lack faith.